I felt tugged and torn through AKURION's latest album, "Come Forth to Me" (2020). The project from Montreal, Canada, which formed in 2012, describes itself as technical death metal, but I also see parts of melodic death metal, and even blackened death metal and folk metal, throughout their newest release. This project is both predictable, in death metal standards, but also inimitable in the sense that there were many outlets of metal that were explored. I was thrown down a stone well to end up at the gates of some uncharted territory, and when I opened the gate doors, I was shocked back into the rhythm of something so familiar to me. The group has former and current members from well-known projects like CRYPTOPSY and CATTLE DECAPITATION. Knowing these other projects, I am surprised at how this album diverges from the expectedness of their other projects. Perhaps this sensation is an outlet or an experimentation of the work that is not portrayed in their other groups as much. Nevertheless, it is quite obvious that it is still built upon the same foundations of the member's backgrounds.

"Leave Them Scars" was perhaps the most jarring song I have listened to in a while. In a melodic and traditional death metal pool of words and phrases, I found myself diving in and out of various sub-genres. Just when I was about to understand one part of the song, the tune completely changed into another. A morph so quick that not even a butterfly had time to spread her wings. There were abrupt stops and starts. A melody that gets swallowed by the bass and higher pitched riffs, that made small puddles on top of the stairs. At some point, I felt that death metal was not even a term that should be used anymore, and that this, a song that seemed like four, was something that comprised the boundaries that it pushed so hard against. And as "Petals From A Rose Eventually Wither to Black," a more folk sounding and odd, slower piece, and "Yet Ye See Them Not," an execution of atmospheric, gnarled, echoes, both slapped my face so hard that I fell off of the stool I was no longer sitting on, they did not compare to the first nine minute track off the album.

That being said, I landed again when I entered the "Souvenir Gardens." Being at the gates of hell in a rainstorm that put out the fire, violins and acoustic guitar soothed my midnight sorrows as I grabbed hold of the bars in front of me. In an eclectic way, this track was so distant, that it threw my imagination down a rabbit hole to hell, perhaps not far off where Alice landed. However, this time, she never returned. Soothing, yet macabre, I believe this was one of the strongest and memorable tracks of the erratic album. While "Bedsores to the Bone" was a return to more traditional death metal styles similar to their other projects, "Wallow in Magnificent Pity" started off on a more Nile tone. With hollow sounding guitars, and carrying the creepiness from the "Souvenir Gardens," the song displayed a low bass and some rather squeaky notes. There was something off about this track, I could not pinpoint what exactly it was. Towards the ending, I did not think it was as strong as it could have been. "Year of the Long Pig" featured excellent climbing riffs, and a tortured pig squeal at the end of the song. I hope that this was pig was not hurt in the making of this track. The final song of "Kingdom Overcome" had some resemblances to their other projects. The song was almost ritualistic, with unrecognizable voices and drum patterns. The song ended on a scratchy note, something I thought could have been executed a bit better than I would have liked.

"Come Forth to Me" extremely strayed from the normality of death metal, so much so that I would not say that this album should be classified. Many elements were smashed together that I thought they could have misplaced a few strings that were so desperately holding themselves together by a strand. The abruptness of the stopping and starting, and quick changes in melodies, were almost so degrading that one forgets the previous parts and moves on to the next. Although this could be considered the main string of the argument, it could have been accomplished in a much easier and accessible fashion than the way it was recorded. Nevertheless, this is an album that is unrivaled, and an album of noteworthiness.